Four Amazing Mini Libraries That Will Inspire You to Read

Pay phones are an obsolete, if ubiquitous, technology, and with 13,659 of them, New York is letting tons of potentially useful public space go to waste. Or it was, until an architect named John Locke (can this really be coincidence?) and his group, the Department of Urban Betterment, stepped in. No, they didn’t create a "taskforce" or appeal a zoning decision or anything that might be in any construed as "bureaucratic." Rather, they started converting payphones into mini-libraries. Their custom-made shelving fits over the existing phone infrastructure, requiring absolutely no fasteners or glues. The phones are still operable, in case any cellphone-less soul has an emergency. Now the pay phone kiosks return to their intended use as urban social infrastructures, as neighbors share books and other media.